Tag Archive: brian eno
In this year’s BBC John Peel lecture, Brian Eno said that one of the failings of modern-day music critics is that they pay too much attention to song lyrics. As part of Roxy Music, Eno played on two of the greatest pop singles of all time – Virginia Plain and Pyjamarama – where the words add to the atmosphere but when considered apart from the music are ,at best, enigmatic, at worst, plain jibberish.
Even when songs do have an obvious meaning or tell a story, they should not be viewed in the same way as poems or works of fiction. This is why the ‘Rock In Translation’ slot of Italy’s Virgin Radio makes for such a torturous listening experience. On this, a woman earnestly reads the translated lyrics to popular tunes as though she were helping to impart some meaningful insight into the human condition. Lines in the vein of “come on baby rock me all night long” are rendered into Italian as though they were some kind of profound comments on the nature of loving relationships. Continue reading
In this year’s BBC 6 John Peel lecture, Brian Eno’s chosen topic was ‘The Ecology of Culture’, although his fascinating talk could equally have been entitled ‘The Economy of Culture’.
In it he attempted to set himself the task of answering two questions:
1. Is Art a luxury?
2. What are the conditions in which the Arts can flourish? Continue reading
Steve Reich in an interview with The Guardian makes, what I think is an accurate summing up of the music scene:
“Look, most music throughout history is garbage. It could be Beethoven’s contemporaries, it could be the current top 40; you play in a garden, you get weeds. A lot of people who use computers are gonna come up with junk; most of the people who use notation came up with junk, too. But there are the Brian Enos – people who have imagination for a new way of working that fits with their intuitive gifts – that come up with great stuff. A few things will turn out to be enduring. Well made, and in a new way.”
Part of an irregular series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl. (Search ‘Backtracking’ to collect the set!)
DEVO – Mongoloid b/w Jocko Homo (Booji Boy, 1977)
Q: Are we not men? A : We Are Devo!
The title and content of the A-side is quite topical in view of the recent controversy over Ricky Gervais’ casual use of the word ‘mong’ on Twitter. I actually always regarded Mongoloid as the flip-side as Jocko-Homo seemed a lot catchier. The synthetic panic pop in the style of Talking Heads seems deliberately designed as an irritant and, if so, it works a treat.
You can’t hear it without picturing the band with nerdy dance routines, yellow jump suits, silly glasses which made them look like a tacky Ohio version of Kraftwerk.
There is some pseudo sci-fi bullshit behind the whole band concept that doesn’t really merit close investigation.
The single has a novelty value but musically it’s a mess. It ended up in my collection because high profile connections with Neil Young, David Bowie and Brian Eno raised my expectations that this was more than just hype.
“Every man, woman and mutant shall know the truth about Devo” is a line from the promo video and the sad truth is this is a very crap record indeed. “We’re pinheads all!” was an all too apt rallying cry.
